Shadow's Curse (28 page)

Callista thought of the night she and David had shared. She had wanted him so badly. Had cast propriety to the spring-scented breeze, had done all but beg him for his touch. Could she . . . She lay a hand upon her stomach. Shook off the worry with a shudder. Clutching the saddlebag to her shoulder, she ran for the wood, Sally’s voice following her like a caution.

“You’re a fool, Cally. Neither man nor beast ever changes his nature.”

A shiver raced up Callista’s spine.
But what if they were one and the same?

*  *  *

The knife shook in his hand. Every shuddering breath he took burned his ice-encrusted lungs, yet sweat damped his skin. Blood steamed in the frigid air as it poured in a crimson wash over her throat, over her gown, over the snow. Afterward, he cradled her in his arms, her hair trailing over his chest, eyes closed as if in sleep and her fingers linked with his . . .

He jerked and gasped and came awake to naught but the scrape of branches and the quiet hoot of an owl. He lay back, blinking up into the darkness, letting the nightmare fade back into the corners of his mind. Harder to do the longer he remained with Callista. As hard as resisting the urge to claim her as his own, or ignoring the need to mark her body and soul now.

“The Fey-blood woman is a courageous and capable soul. Any man would be proud to claim her as his mate.” The man from the wood spoke, his ancient gaze dark and impenetrable. “Yet you hold back. Perhaps had I done the same in your place . . . but that is over an age past. My blood is colder now and I understand caution.”

David’s gaze narrowed and another queasy oath singed his brain.

The man smiled, though no light reached his eyes and sorrow still etched itself into the bones of his face. “Try not to throw yourself in front of a bullet for a few weeks.”

David tested his strength. Raised an arm. Made a fist. Easy enough. Then he drew a deep breath and nearly passed out from the ache torching his lungs. Fuck all, that bloody hurt.

“By rights, you should be dead. Annwn was open. Your soul ready to flee.”

“Who are you?” David whispered.

“I’m called Lucan.”

The teasing half-remembered thought clung. Lucan of the Lythene; a clan extinct ages ago. A man with eyes vast and deep as centuries. A leader who commanded true Fey as if they were baseborn peasants. David’s grandmother had told him the stories often enough. She’d passed along her love for such tales of passion and treachery. But it couldn’t be. This man looked no cruel traitor or brutal monster who would condemn a race. Just sorrowful and stern and hard as the rock they’d lifted above his tomb.

“Not a tomb—a prison,” Lucan said quietly.

“You can read my mind?”

“If I concentrate,” Lucan answered. “Once upon a time, it was a common talent among our kind.”

“Where’s Callista?”

“She is well. The man who threatened her? Dead.”

“You saved her as I asked.”

“I helped a friend.”

Adam had been a friend but Adam was dead. His face had been one of those looming up from the dark of shadowed paths.
Not yet,
he’d warned as he sent David back into life. But it wouldn’t be long before he joined him there. He’d seen the end. Witnessed its form. Felt its horror. It still shuddered along his bones like winter. Callista was a friend. More than a friend, but he would betray her. The way of her death changed with every dreaming. The outcome never did.

“You saved her—this time. But what of the next?” David answered. “I should never . . . I’ll only . . . fucking
hell, I’ve cocked things up.” His voice broke. He was closer to the edge than he thought, teetering as the nightmare swam once more before his eyes as the pain crushed his lungs and seized his muscles with every shift of his body.

“Is something amiss?” Lucan asked.

“Callista trusts me.”

“Is that wrong?”

“She shouldn’t trust me. She should run like hell.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to kill her.”

Callista stepped down from the coach with a nervous glance, her damp hands gripping her satchel. A man and woman stood upon the front steps of an enormous house, elegant wings of tawny stone spread to either side of a tall, columned main block. Light spilled onto the gravel from rows of tall windows, and from somewhere within the house, the haunting song of a violin played. The woman had wild ginger hair twisted up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. The man was handsome, with straight dark brows and a strong chin, a pale slash of scar near his left eye. They both regarded her with the gold-flecked eyes of the Other.

“Welcome to Addershiels, Miss Hawthorne. I’m Lord Duncallan. This is my wife. We’ve been expecting you.”

“I thought this was the home of Gray de Coursy.”

“The Earl of Halvossa is”—he seemed to search for the proper word—“indisposed this evening. He’ll meet you tomorrow.”

“Earl of . . . do you mean the Ghost Earl?” Callista had heard the stories in London. The estranged heir to a dukedom, a mysterious battlefield hero who’d barely shown his face since returning home from war. He was the most sought-after guest at every party and the bachelor every unmarried woman desired. She wondered how those same matchmaking mamas and social-climbing hostesses would react if they discovered he was an Imnada shapechanger.

That he was cursed.

That he was dying.

*  *  *

The dinner was lavish and the wine flowed freely, but Callista picked at her plate and barely tasted what she swallowed. Her thoughts remained on David, who had been bundled upstairs as soon as they’d arrived, Lady Duncallan shouting orders to maidservants and footmen as she followed after. Callista had sought to attend him, but Lucan restrained her.

“He is Imnada, my lady. And the shapechangers have always been stronger and more able to withstand injury than normal humans, but it will not be easy or pretty to watch. Best leave him to Badb and Lady Duncallan for now.”

Her Ladyship had soon returned to assure her of David’s comfort, but the hours dragged and Callista’s thoughts remained scattered and afraid.

“Faster. More agile. Quicker to respond to danger. Quicker to heal,” David had boasted.

She prayed he’d not been wrong.

By rights, she should have been the one lying blooded and feverish upstairs. She had tripped the
wire. The bullet had been meant for her. Only David’s speed and animal instincts had saved her from the poacher’s trap. He’d saved her life. She prayed it was not at the cost of his own.

As footmen offered and removed courses, she tried to listen as Lady Duncallan chatted and tried to answer when Lord Duncallan asked her questions, but mostly she choked down food she never tasted and sipped from a wineglass that seemed never to empty. By the time the last footman cleared the last plate and closed the door behind him, leaving the three of them alone, she was exhausted, dizzy with drink, and her stomach was more full of knots than of dinner.

“We’re traveling to Skye,” she said in answer to His Lordship’s latest question. “My aunt is a priestess there.”

“Mr. St. Leger is taking you?” he asked. He watched Callista from the head of the table, spinning his cane idly between ink-stained fingers. “He agreed to accompany you to Dunsgathaic?”

“I would have promised you a trip to the bloody moon,” David had confessed. He had never meant to take her to Skye. Those had been empty words. A promise built on air. “We made a deal. He vowed he would see it through to the end.”

“If only he offered us such devotion, eh, Katie love?” Lord Duncallan smiled, his eyes softening whenever they turned to his wife.

“Poor Gray,” she answered. “He’s been certain all it would take was the right sort of nudge and David would be won over to the cause.”

“Are you the right sort of nudge, Miss Hawthorne?” Duncallan asked, turning his gold-flecked brown eyes to her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I doubt I’m the right sort of anything,” she replied, fatigue and disillusion taking her over.

Lady Duncallan sipped at her wine while His Lordship leaned back in his chair, left leg stretched awkwardly in front of him. Unlike Corey, who used his walking stick as a gentlemanly affectation, the baron seemed to truly need it. He favored his right leg, and from time to time as he walked, his face would blanch with pain. Callista had not dared to ask, but he’d seen her noticing.

“An accident a few years ago left me crippled. Lucan saved my life,” he explained.

“Mr. St. Leger must love you very much,” Lady Duncallan broke in, her smile friendly, though there was a decided twinkle in her eyes.

“What?” Callista nearly choked on her wine. “No, it isn’t like that. We have a business arrangement. That’s all. We only pretended to be lovers fleeing north to explain why we traveled together.”

“Truly?” Lady Duncallan’s smile faded, a small downturn at the corners of her mouth, a crease between her brows. “From all I know of the shapechangers, it would take more than a handshake to persuade one to walk into Scathach’s fortress, the heart of Amhas-draoi power.”

But then, David hadn’t been persuaded. And Callista had never for a moment believed he loved her.

*  *  *

David opened his eyes, but this time the pain did not come ripping up angrily from the same deep well where the wolf slept, waiting. It snaked along limbs
thick and sluggish, as if his blood congealed within his veins and curled hard within his chest.

“Shhh, be still.” A hand touched his brow, cool against his sweat-soaked skin. “Your fever’s broken. The worst is over.”

He should have known she’d be here. She’d been here every time he’d waked. When the agony left him drenched in sweat and raving. When he swam up from the haze of his darkest dreams, shuddering and racked with tears. The Mother knew he’d tried to leave her behind. Yet circumstances worked to keep them together as if the dream fought to become truth.

“Where are we?” he asked with a tongue thick and dry.

“Addershiels. Lucan and Badb brought us.”

“Lucan?” His heart cramped, his lungs caught on a ragged breath.

“He claims you know him.”

David closed his eyes, his theory fantastic but un-shakeable. “Know
of
him, but . . .” He shook his head. “It can’t be real.”

“Has anything been real since you landed in that Soho alley like a hero out of a nightmare?” Shadows flickered across her drawn and careworn face.

“What of the book, Callista? Where is it?” He sought to sit up and nearly passed out as spots danced before his eyes. He flopped back on his pillows with a frustrated breath. “Shit, I left it behind. It’s still with Oakham. Mac’s going to fucking kill me.”

“Calm down. It’s safe with His Lordship.”

“His Lordship? Who the hell is . . . oh, you mean de Coursy.”

“I’ve seen him only once and very briefly. Since
then he’s been closeted with Lucan and Lord and Lady Duncallan.”

“The Duncallans? They’re mixed up in this madness as well?” David ran a hand over the tight seam of the bandage stretching around his torso and up over one shoulder. His wits returned, though too slowly for his liking. “Secret meetings. Fey-bloods crawling all over the castle. A mysterious shapechanger wandering the halls in company with one of the true Fey. Damn it, I feel as tightly wound as an Egyptian mummy and about as useful. How long have I been lying here like a lump?”

“Two days.”

“Shit. No doubt raving like a lunatic.”

Sorrow glimmered in her eyes. “Only a little.”

He didn’t ask what secrets he’d revealed. He could well imagine.

“Lucan said as long as the wound doesn’t sicken, you’ll be back on your feet soon enough. Though he did warn that you’ll have quite the scar to show off.”

“I’ll add it to my collection,” he huffed. Inaction never set well. He needed to be moving, planning, running. It gave him less time to brood.

“David, you were delirious. The burn on your back—”

“For a man who shouldn’t exist, Lucan’s full of conversation,” he interrupted before she could finish. That Callista knew of his shame was bad enough; he didn’t need to add degrading humiliation to the stabbing pain already in his chest or the scars on his body. “Did he tell you where he came from? How he survived? What the hell is going on?

Her expression closed tight as a fist, but she took
the hint. She knew as well as he that the hurts of the past were best left in the grave. “What do you mean Lucan ‘shouldn’t exist’?”

David closed his eyes, letting his thoughts coalesce. It didn’t make his conclusions any better, but his head didn’t pound quite so much. “This will sound like madness . . . but I think he’s the Imnada warlord who betrayed King Arthur. Lucan Kingkiller. The Traitor Lord.”

“It can’t be. The Lost Days were over a thousand years ago. Lucan was slaughtered during the battle.”

“I know the stories as well as you do. When you’re around him, do you feel anything”—he placed a hand against his bandaged chest—“here?”

She shook her head. “There’s no feeling of death surrounding him. He’s alive—or at least not dead.”

“Is there a difference?”

Her face hardened. “Very much so.”